Murder, Malice and Mischief

by Quinn, Lucy

  Sherwood shook his head. “Linda Agani has an ironclad alibi for Ruddy’s murder and a gambling problem. We talked to her about her whereabouts that night. They had that argument about four o’clock that afternoon, before Ruddy showed up at the golf club for the outing. Right after their argument, she left the house and went to the tribal casino about twenty miles away.”

  “Well, that’s what she says she did,” I countered.

  “The casino’s closed-circuit security cameras show her car driving into the parking garage and a woman matching her description walking into the casino. Her slots reward card was in use in various slot machines for seven hours, and we can track a woman who looks just like her walking around the casino on the closed-circuit cameras. Her movements match the location of her slots reward card, too.”

  “Maybe she had a friend drive her car to fake an alibi,” I said, as if I knew anything at all about alibis.

  Sherwood said, “We asked around the casino, and some of the other regulars know her and said that she was there that night. She even ran a red light near the casino on her way home, and a red-light camera took a picture that shows her license plate, her car, and her face at three in the morning, well after the murder. Linda Agani didn’t do it, and we would be laughed out of court if we charged her. It’s about as close to an ironclad alibi as you can get. She couldn’t have set that alibi up any tighter if she had tried.”

  I put my driver back into my bag and pulled out a shorter iron. “She’s not the only suspect. Trudi and I have been trying to figure out who killed Ruddy. Considering that Lale Kollen was going to inherit Ruddy’s estate, maybe you should look at who gets the money now.”

  “Please, for the love of all that is holy, stop. You’re making yourself look worse and worse. It’s not that we don’t want your help. It’s just that you are making yourself look like the most likely suspect every time you find something. Please, Bee, stop snooping around with this. If for no other reason, the person who killed Ruddy may have thought that Lale Kollen was getting too close to figuring out that they did it, and that’s why they killed her, too.”

  “You keep suggesting that one person killed both of them,” I said.

  He sighed. “Because we’ve had two related murders involving knives in the last few weeks, the crime lab expedited our evidence. The same unknown fingerprints that were on the knife that killed Ruddy was also on the knife that killed Lale Kollen. It looks like the same person committed both murders. Ruddy was killed with two stab wounds. One hit a rib and bounced off. The second one hit his aorta, and it blew up. Lale Kollen had three stab wounds. One found her left ventricle. That knife was most likely from Lale’s knife rack, right there in the house. It matched her knife set and had her fingerprints on it, too.”

  “If you’ll just listen to me,” I said. “If you’ll just let me tell you what we found out about Pauline Damir—”

  He held up his hands. “Don’t say anything else. If you tell me something, then I have to tell the police what you said and that you told it to me. It will put you in an even worse situation.”

  I begged him, “Just listen to me.”

  Sherwood pressed his hands over his ears. “I am leaving. Don’t tell me anything.”

  He walked back to his car, and I was shaking so badly that I couldn’t hit any more golf balls.

  Chapter 28

  THE next afternoon, the dining room in CGC’s clubhouse was arranged just as it always was for everyday use. Crisp, white tablecloths draped gracefully over square tables set for four or longer tables for eight people. Low centerpieces of silk flowers and golf pencils stood in the centers. Comfortable, upholstered armchairs ringed every table. The entire clubhouse was decorated in navy blue, gold, and white, typical New England colors. The ceiling soared above, nearly three stories above my head. At the end of the dining room, a glass wall of windows let the afternoon light shine in. The dining room could hold about a hundred people comfortably, or a hundred and fifty if we used stand-up serving stations.

  Only sixty people had signed up for the Nine and Dine this sultry Friday night, so we didn’t have to lift the wings of the square tables to turn them into round tables that could seat six or even eight people, in a pinch. I had about two hours to whip this dining room into a fun and interesting party space.

  Usually, I could count on at least a hundred people to sign up for the Nine and Dine, a regularly scheduled event that takes place on the second Friday evening of every month. After a fun nine-hole golf scramble, everybody came into the clubhouse’s dining room for a sit-down New England supper. Sometimes, we served lobster. More often, supper was scallops, seafood, and steaks.

  But as always for the Nine and Dine, the dining room needed to be decorated in a festive manner to make sure that people remembered that the social events were one of the benefits of belonging to a club rather than just paying green fees every time they wanted to play a round of golf.

  I wasn’t feeling particularly festive.

  Because we only had a little more than half of our usual sign-ups, Chef Leopold had decided to seize this chance to prepare a more involved menu than usual, probably in the hopes of increasing next month’s turnout when word got around about how extravagant the meal had been. Every table was already set with a gold charger for under the plate and an extensive array of silverware, plus two wine glasses.

  With all those forks lined up and shining in the afternoon sunlight, it looked like Chef Leo was going to serve at least five courses.

  He was going over the top for just a Nine and Dine. This wasn’t the Winter Formal or the Halloween Devil’s Ball, a pun related to how people complained that their golf balls must be possessed, and that’s why the balls didn’t fly or land as the person had intended.

  I was glaring at the dining room, my fists braced on my hips, as I tried to figure out how to decorate this little clubhouse using no additional money because the club was insolvent.

  Behind me, a woman’s voice said, “Hi, Bee. What do you need help with?”

  A thousand things ran through my head that I needed help with, starting with figuring out how to convince the police that I was not the number-one suspect in the murders of Ruddy Agani and Lale Kollen.

  However, I turned and beamed at her. “Hello, Ann! We need to decorate for tonight’s after-golf supper. I’ve done this so many times that I don’t have any ideas left.”

  Ann Carmo smiled, her crimson lips curving upward. You never caught Ann without her lipstick and earrings. She said, “We can narrow it down. When you are buying a boat, there are three things to think about: speed, comfort, and cost. You can have any two of those you want, but no one can have all three. You can have comfort and cost, but it’s going to be a slow boat with a small motor. Or you can have speed and comfort, but that’s going to cost you. So, you have to ask yourself, which two things are the most important here?”

  I scratched my head. “I’m sorry, Ann. It’s been a rough couple of weeks for me. I don’t get what you’re trying to say.”

  “Basically, I’m saying that we may need to do this cheaply, easily, and quickly, but you can only have two of those. The only way to get it done easily and quickly would be to hire someone else to do it, and that would mean it wouldn’t be done cheaply. If you want to do it cheaply and easily, we might have to find some things at our houses or call a bunch of people to see what they have, which means that it wouldn’t be done quickly. See? You have to choose your priorities.”

  I mused, “I think it should be done cheaply and quickly, which according to your rubric, means that it can’t be done easily, right?”

  “Right. That means we’re going to have to put in some sweat equity and figure out how to do things the smart way. So, are there any decorations, maybe some hiding in the clubhouse or in your garage, that we can re-purpose for tonight’s Nine and Dine?”

  I thought so hard that my eyes rolled up in my head, mentally ransacking the club. “That narrows things down a bit. I g
ave away most of my holiday decorations when I downsized to my little cottage, but there is a storeroom here at the clubhouse that we can look at. I don’t think anybody’s even been in there for ten years.”

  Ann Carmo’s face lit up in a grin. “Oh, I love poking around secret places. Let’s go.”

  I led her down the stairs, past the ladies’ locker room, to a rarely used door at the end of one of the hallways. I pulled out my little keychain, and thanks to Ruddy’s thrifty ways, the key to my office door fit the lock to the door of the storeroom, too.

  Inside, I flipped on the light switch. Dust floated in the glow from the fluorescent tube lights overhead. Brown boxes were stacked against one wall, while plastic storage containers in crayon colors filled the other side of the room.

  I walked inside and surveyed the boxes.

  Masking tape labels striped most of the boxes’ lids. Blocky letters spelled out the names of holidays and themes, like Fourth of July, Christmas Ball, Kentucky Derby, and America’s Cup Party.

  “Carrying this stuff upstairs is going to be difficult,” Ann said. “But, if we use something from down here, it will be cheap and quick.”

  I walked around the boxes, trailing my fingers over the gritty lids. “Christmas in May?”

  “Oh! These decorations for the America’s Cup would be nautical and New England-ish. Isn’t Chef Leo serving a seafood platter for dinner?”

  “Yeah, we could just put these out and be done with it. Help me carry this box upstairs.”

  With some huffing and puffing, the two of us managed to wrestle the long, heavy bin up the stairs and to the dining room. It wasn’t easy.

  Inside, we found adorable, wooden sailboats, navy blue chair bunting, and some prints of sailboats that we could insert in the frames instead of our usual paintings.

  Ann rubbed her hands together. “If you’ll start on the pictures, I’ll run around and decorate. Shouldn’t take too long.”

  Indeed, I found a screwdriver and started taking apart the picture frames for the rather nice prints of yachts cresting teal ocean waves.

  Ann bustled around the dining room, her arms full of little wooden ships, and she put together new centerpieces on the tables that, somehow, looked nothing like the original golf-themed ones, even though many of the elements were the same. She collected all the cups of golf pencils in the plastic bin and began tying the navy-blue fabric around the backs of the chairs.

  I managed to get two of the prints put into frames in fifteen minutes. “This isn’t going to take long at all. We’ll have you out of here in an hour or so.”

  Ann was leaning over the place settings at a long table, fussing over some silk greenery to integrate a tiny sailboat into the centerpiece. “I don’t have anywhere to go. I suppose I could go home and shower before the event, but we are playing nine holes of golf, first.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know you were coming to the Nine and Dine tonight.” With all the distractions lately, I’d just looked at the total number of people and hadn’t taken a close look at the sign-up sheet.

  “Oh, yes. I like to participate in the social events here at the club. I think Sherlynne paired me with the Nagarkars and Mint Bunnag for the scramble.”

  “Isn’t your husband signed up?” I asked as I used a screwdriver to pry a tough staple loose from the wooden picture frame.

  Ann laughed. “No, Wilber doesn’t do social stuff like this very often.”

  “But he golfs, doesn’t he?” I asked her. There wasn’t much point of paying for a CGC family membership unless at least two people golfed at least some. A single membership would be cheaper. I was just looking to save her some money.

  “Oh, yes, but not enough, and not well. His idea of a sport is sitting in the sun and waiting for a fish to eat his bait.”

  I laughed. “Ah, he’s big into fishing, then.”

  “Not so much anymore.”

  I sat back on my heels. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

  “We’ve known each other for decades. I can’t imagine what you don’t know already.”

  I gestured with my screwdriver toward the golf course beyond the windows. “Are you okay after we found Ruddy, out there?”

  Ann had moved from making the centerpieces to decorating the chairs at the long table, and she paused as she was tying a bow in the dark-blue bunting. “It was weird. I won’t pretend it wasn’t weird. I spontaneously said yes when you said you needed people to look for Ruddy. And then I found myself traipsing all over the golf course in high heels, and we found him. I’m still kind of shocked about how everything happened that night.”

  “Yeah, I was surprised that you didn’t change into your golf shoes like Trudi and Erick did.”

  “They were already in my car. It would have taken too long to go get them.”

  “How well do you know Pauline Damir?” I asked, pretending to be very busy with the picture frame.

  Ann stood and progressed to the next table, picking out a little anchor and a sailor to tuck into the centerpiece. “Not that well. I mean, she’s been around. We’ve been members here at Canterbury for several years, but I’ve only been active here in the past year or so. I’m just getting to know a lot of the people here.”

  “Yeah, but you’ve lived in the town of Canterbury for a long time, even back before you had your kids.”

  She brushed the wine glasses at one of the place settings as she reached for the centerpiece, and the crystal glasses rang together. “After I quit working for the school and had my kids, I just knew other mommies for a long time.”

  This happened to a lot of women. Not to me, obviously, though I certainly knew the mommy crowd from having been the town’s kinder teacher. “So you don’t know Pauline that well.”

  “Not really. She’s the florist who was talking at Ladies’ League about how Ruddy had been messing up her business by not paying her, right?”

  “She mentioned that. She was hanging around with you at the reception after the glow-ball tournament that night, right?”

  “She and I played with Arnie Holmes that night. She was already wasted by the time you asked people to go with you to look for Ruddy. I didn’t know she drank that much.”

  Yes, the two of them had played with my Uncle Arnie that night. As a matter of fact, my uncle Arnie’s group had just been finishing up and coming inside when Ruddy and Oliver Shwetz had been arguing. Ruddy had almost bowled Pauline over when he’d stomped out of the clubhouse.

  I asked Ann, “After you came in, did Pauline stick to you the whole night? Do you think that there may have been some time, maybe half an hour or so, maybe a little bit after Ruddy stormed out of the clubhouse, that you didn’t see her for a while?”

  Ann turned and looked right at me. “Yeah, there was. We had played together, so it’s an unwritten rule that you’re supposed to hang out together, afterward. You know, because it mixes up the couples so we don’t have ironclad cliques forming.”

  “Yeah, it’s one of the reasons we hold so many of these social events like scrambles with assigned teams, to mix everybody up.”

  “Anyway, I was hanging out with Arnie in the bar, drinking for a while, and then I came out to get a fresh plate of hors d’oeuvres. That was when I found Pauline again, and she was already half-soused. I don’t know where she’d been for the previous hour or so.”

  “So there’s an hour missing from Pauline’s alibi,” I mused.

  “Alibi?” Ann gasped. “Do you think Pauline Damir killed Ruddy Agani?”

  I went back to smoothing a print into the picture frame. “Someone did.”

  “I still don’t think a woman could have done it. It would have taken a big man to kill someone like Ruddy Agani. Do you know where Oliver Shwetz was the whole night? He had that argument with Ruddy.”

  “I told Oliver he could go up to my office to calm down, and then I didn’t see him for the rest of the night. I think he went home.”

  Ann shook her head, her dark ponytail twitching. “I wouldn
’t believe a word Oliver Shwetz said about anything. I’ve heard that he was involved in a lot of shady deals over at the Gnostic Yacht Club, too, and I wonder if Ruddy found out about them. Maybe that’s why they were arguing, and maybe that’s why Oliver killed him.”

  I glanced at Ann. “I didn’t know Oliver was a member over at the Gnostic.”

  “Oh, yes,” she nodded while she was tying the blue chair bunting in a neat bow. “Oliver was a big sailor, and he was very involved in their finances. He was on the board and had the power to write checks.”

  Oliver must not have been concerned with having to sue the yacht club. “He wasn’t involved in their embezzlement scandal, though.”

  “They never caught who did it. They just closed the club.”

  “That’s odd,” I said.

  Ann shrugged. “Canterbury is a small town. Things happen, and people who have friends don’t get charged with things. Oliver is close friends with the chief of police and the mayor.”

  Those weird spreadsheets I’d found disturbed me even more. “The Canterbury police chief and mayor are members here, too.”

  “Hmmm,” Ann said. “And so is Oliver Shwetz, and the club has cash flow problems. That’s odd, isn’t it?”

  When I looked over, Ann was staring straight at me, her eyebrows raised.

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding and unhappy. “It’s odd.”

  After Ann left, I took one last look around the clubhouse that was now ready for the Nine and Dine.

  The centerpieces were cozy and cute. The pictures were now nautical and sporty, rather than golfy and sporty. The chair backs were festooned with navy-blue bunting.

  However—

  Some of the place settings were wrong.

  I walked among the tables, examining them.

  One plate at a four-person table had no dessert fork across the top.